


A Night Like This

by paramountie



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Canon Compliant, Infidelity, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 03:53:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20128912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paramountie/pseuds/paramountie
Summary: The night they all arrive in Derry, Richie shows up at Eddie's hotel room.





	A Night Like This

**Author's Note:**

> oh am I writing a fic that's already been written a thousand times? MAYBE SO
> 
> Title from "A Wonderful Life" by Brian Fallon

Richie’s not an insomniac. If he can lie down somewhere, he can sleep, easy as that. And yet tonight, back in Derry for the first time in decades, he can’t settle down. His arms prickle, his nose itches, and his toes won’t stop wriggling. It’s not fear that’s keeping him up, although it probably should be. Any sane person would be terrified. But the terror is locked up deep in Richie, swept under some rug in his mind. 

It’s Eddie. The proximity to Eddie. That’s why he’s awake. When Richie closes his eyes, he can picture him. Maybe he’s watching TV, or asleep on his bed, face lax and arms flung out, like a little kid. He might still be in his clothes from the day, wrinkled and dusty, or wearing striped pajamas with a row of shiny buttons down the front. 

Eddie doesn’t look like he did when they were young. He’s like an old picture of his child self. Crumpled and smudged. Worn in places. Most of his hair is gone, and he’s taller. His face has lost its baby roundness, but his expressions are the same. He still bites his lip when he’s thinking, rubs his eyes when he’s frustrated, wrinkles his nose when Richie’s talking. 

The moment Richie saw him again, he wanted to touch him. His limbs were like iron fillings crawling to a magnet. He sat next to him at dinner and kept reaching across him for the sesame chicken, the water jug, the soy sauce. He kicked Eddie’s ankle and pinched the sleeve of his jacket. Now, Eddie’s floors away but Richie can still feel the drag in his skin. 

He resists the pull for an hour or two. He workshops a new character but he’s too distracted to nail down the Voice. Should it be nasally? Maybe a French accent? If he knocked on Eddie’s door, would he open it? 

His feet keep pointing him towards the hallway. Eventually, they pull him to the elevator. 

Before he can overthink it, he arrives at Eddie’s room. The ten-year-old version of him has taken over, the one who’s brave and dumb and willing to do anything to make Eddie look at him. 

When Eddie opens the door, he doesn’t seem surprised. Instead, his shoulders drop, tension leaking out. 

“Hey,” he says, scrubbing at his eyes. 

“Can’t sleep,” Richie says. 

“Me neither.” 

He steps aside to let Richie in and Richie makes a beeline for the bed. He sits on it, bounces, and wriggles his eyebrows at Eddie, suggestive and not quite joking. Eddie doesn’t notice. Instead he drops down next to Richie, head on the pillow and arm swept over his face. 

“I keep expecting the walls to start leaking blood,” he says and Richie immediately glares at the wallpaper, suspicious.

“We could get you a sleep mask.” Richie lays down too. The warmth from Eddie’s stomach presses against his arm. “You can't be scared if you can't see shit." 

"What if I start hearing voices?" 

"Put on some headphones.”

“Something could touch me.”

“I’ll wrap you in a thousand blankets. Eddie the burrito.”

That makes him laugh, and Richie is so pleased he wants to rest his head on Eddie’s chest, curl up like a puppy.

“Don’t see, hear, or feel anything,” Eddie says, “That’s how you live in this town.” 

“You want all five senses? You gotta move.”

Richie rolls onto his side. Eddie’s still covering his face but Richie can see the little jut of his chin, a couple eyelashes, and crow’s feet half-hidden by his knuckles. His arms are bare, skin smooth and lightly freckled. When he rolls over, his eyes are half-lidded. He smells clean, like mint and soap. 

“A person shouldn’t be this scared,” he says, quiet, more to his pillow than to Richie. 

"Aren't you always scared?" Richie asks. He's aiming for a joke, but it feels mean. 

"Not like this," Eddie replies, unoffended. "Not constantly. It's like the difference between sitting in the sun and being cooked.”

Without thinking, Richie puts a hand on Eddie’s hip, ready to feel a crackle of heat. The moment he touches Eddie, he’s self-conscious. They’re close now, overly intimate. He’s too nervous to leave his hand there, and too nervous to move it. Eddie’s expression doesn’t change. 

“We’re safe now, aren’t we?” Richie says. Eddie raises his eyebrows. 

“No, we aren’t.” 

A worried line has appeared on his forehead, like he thinks Richie might be crazy, or sick. Any second he’s going to stick a thermometer in Richie’s mouth and check his pupils. 

“No, I mean…” Richie pauses, not sure where he’s going. But Eddie is watching him intently, the anxiety fading from his expression. “We’ve been safe up until now. Ever since we got back to our rooms, nothing’s happened. We’ve gotten through a whole conversation without maggots crawling out from under our pillows. We’re _not_ safe but as time passes we find out that we _were_. We will have been safe, you get me?”__

_ _“No,” Eddie says, grinning a little. _ _

_ _“Whatever. You’re safe with me.” _ _

_ _“Uh-huh.”_ _

_ _There’s a lull and Richie feels sleepy for the first time all night. It’s like the presence of Eddie made something in his mind click into place, the last piece of track so the train runs smoothly. _ _

_ _“I felt safer with you. When we were kids.” His eyes are closed, so he can’t see Eddie’s reaction to that. He doesn’t want to, anyway. “You were scared a lot, but you were brave too. It made me want to impress you. I think I stayed alive just to impress you.” _ _

_ _It’s quiet for awhile, and Richie wonders if he'd said any of that, really, or if he’d fallen asleep while he wasn’t paying attention. It’s a nice dream, if it is one. The bed is soft and Eddie feels right curled next to him, like an old pillow used to the shape of his head. _ _

_ _Eddie touches his cheek. His fingers nudge into Richie’s hair. _ _

_ _“Let’s make a deal,” Eddie says. Richie opens his eyes and Eddie is so close, a radiant smile billowing over his face. “When we finally fight this thing? You keep impressing me.” _ _

_ _Then he leans forward and kisses Richie. And maybe this is where Richie was hoping the night would go when he showed up here, but he hadn’t let himself really wish for it, hadn’t even wanted to think it. Now, thirty-odd years of pent-up feelings are rushing out, and Richie kisses back with abandon. He didn’t remember this guy a few days ago, but he loved him, even so. It’s a raucous, buzzing, bubbly love, powerful and infectious. The kind that only a ten year old can conjure up, because theirs are the only bodies that can contain it. _ _

_ _Some part of Richie wants to tie himself up to Eddie, chain them together. He keeps pulling him closer and closer, one hand behind Eddie’s neck, the other under his jacket, brushing the skin of his lower back. _ _

_ _In college there was this quiet, nerdy little guy who used to make Richie crazy. They never talked to each other, but whenever he was around Richie couldn’t shut up. He’d interrupt his professors, and climb on desks, and bust out every Voice he could think of. Sometimes, the guy would laugh, with him or at him, who cared. Either way, Richie would glow all the way back to his dorm. He'd never known _why_ he was so obsessed with this guy but now he understood. He was like Eddie, a piece of Eddie. _ _

_ _Richie must have encountered a thousand Eddies during the years. He’d get sappy over hypochondriacs, asthmatics, boys with delicate features and girls with big mouths. You put them all together and they’d make up Eddie, or most of him. Richie used to think he’d been in love hundreds of times, with people on the street, movie stars, a litany of exes. But maybe he’d only fallen in love once, over and over. _ _

_ _Eddie pulls away, and the fear is back, crinkling up his forehead. Richie’s forgotten what being afraid feels like. All he wants is to kiss Eddie’s cheek, his nose, the back of his ear. _ _

_ _“Richie,” Eddie says, quiet. _ _

_ _“Yeah,” Richie replies. His fingers are still pressed into Eddie’s warm skin. _ _

_ _“I’m married.” _ _

_ _The words barely register. Richie tucks his face against the crook of Eddie’s neck. _ _

_ _“Happily?” he asks. Eddie doesn’t answer, and that tells Richie everything he needs to know. “Okay. Run away with me. Come to LA.”_ _

_ _“I can’t, Richie, I have a business, I have—“_ _

_ _“Alright, I’ll run away with you. I always liked New York.”_ _

_ _He pulls away from Eddie, enough to see his expression. It’s soft around the eyes, worried around the mouth. _ _

_ _“You’ll change your mind in the morning.”_ _

_ _“I won’t,” Richie says, and he knows it’s true, with an all powerful, bone-deep certainty. It doesn’t matter what happens in the morning, if he dies or if he lives or if his memory of Eddie gets wrenched away again. He’ll remember this somehow. That magnet in his body will pull him straight to New York. Maybe he’ll be kicking and screaming, maybe he’ll do it willingly, but he’ll get there. _ _

_ _“Whatever you say.” Eddie doesn’t believe him, but that’s okay. Richie’s going to prove it to him. He’s got the rest of his life. That might be another sixty years or six hours, but he'll do it. Eddie rests his chin on the top of Richie’s head. “Listen, Richie, I have to talk to-“_ _

_ _“Later,” Richie presses a kiss on Eddie's collarbone. “Just a few more minutes.” _ _

_ _“Okay,” Eddie says. Richie lets his eyes close._ _

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](https://janvanfine.tumblr.com/)!


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